happy birthday
by kazeno
Summary: [diabolo] happy birthday, my friend


happy birthday [llyse]  
  
You were born on a normal day, no portents or significant event to signify your birth, and I blissfully ignorant of it. You did not know me; I did not know you. We were separate, like clouds in the sky floating randomly around, uncaring of where we were going until the day we bumped together.  
  
On your sixth birthday, two weeks after I met you, we threw a tiny little birthday party in the field behind my house. Do you remember? I had four half-burnt candles scavenged from my cousin's birthday celebration (because mother did not approve of my friendship with you, and I feared to be forbidden from being with you on this most joyous occasion); you had one that you got from I know-not-where, and I made up for the last one with a blade of grass that gave off the most horrible stink when it burnt. And we had no cake, just some bread, but we played games afterwards, and we had fun, and that was the most important thing, was it not?  
  
On your seventh birthday, I bought you a pen with my pocket money. It had a little light on the end that lit up when you squeezed the handle, and I remember you hugged me for that. We had a little party too, but my mother insisted that I be back by three for tuition, and we had little time together, so we sat and talked instead. We talked... Oh, we talked about the future, about our dreams and hopes. And I, innocent, said that I wanted to grow up to be someone who helped people, perhaps a doctor, or a fireman, or a policeman... And you said that I would, too. And I hugged you for that, and listened to your dreams. You wanted, you said, to help me when you grew up. You never guessed; I never guessed; we were naïve, fools striding unknowingly off the cliff at the behest of the devil.  
  
You were the one who told me of the way to help her. And so in our despair we fell far and fast, and continued falling.  
  
On your seventeenth birthday I did not know you. I went to school, I went to my tuition classes, and I went home to cook dinner for an inebriated mother. I remembered nothing of you, and nothing of our childish friendly love for each other. You, perhaps, were wandering, sleeping in yet another subway station, or curled up on a park bench. Struggling to survive, struggling to find me. Our clouds had floated apart, yet you remembered, and I did not.  
  
You found me, too. And I helped people, and you helped me. Sword and shield, we struggled (we thought) against evil, and tried to help people when we could, even when 'help' meant 'kill'. And every death drove blades through our hearts, but we hid it and relied on each other to keep the blood staunched. In the deadly pressure around us we were pressed ever closer, until we stopped being friends and became much more: partners in the true sense of the word, bound in a symbiotic relationship that would only end with the death of one of us.  
  
On your eighteenth birthday you and I faced off on the top of the building where everything started. Below us lay the bodies, the corpses of people who some would call evil. They were despairing, staggering wounded and bleeding until they, like us, stumbled off the edge of the cliff and fell. And there on that blooded ground you sought to make us closer yet, the two of us merged into one; yet it was wrong for you sought to overshadow me, to dominate me, and that was not the way partnership worked. But I could not blame you, could I?--For you were dead, slain by your dark side, slain by the twisted desires that took root in your soul and broke it apart. Jealousy, rage, obsession: these were the weapons used against you, and used by the fallen you against me. I was sorry. I am sorry. And I too sought to unite us, and perhaps I succeeded, for I feel that I am no longer myself, that there is some of your essence within me now as I stand here with her lying still in my arms. This is the way it should end.  
  
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; demons to the darkness. Angels to the light.  
  
Happy birthday, my friend. 


End file.
